---
title: Gumroad Founder and Viral Sensation Sahil Lavingia Riffs on the Future of Work, Failure, and How to Build an Audience | Trends by The Hustle
description: Lavingia considers remote work video software the “next frontier of innovation” and tells how he was inspired to build the Gumroad platform
image: https://www.nlopchantamang.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/lrg-cropped-Sahil-Lavingia-Headshot-Day-by-Trevor-Christensen-2198_20190823223824-3.jpg
---

![](https://www.nlopchantamang.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/lrg-cropped-Sahil-Lavingia-Headshot-Day-by-Trevor-Christensen-2198_20190823223824-3.jpg)

Pinterest hired Sahil Lavingia to build its iPhone app in 2010. He was 19, a college dropout and a self-taught coder. His stock options would end up being valued around $40m. 

In 2011, Lavingia, then 26, quit to start Gumroad, an ecommerce tool for selling creative products. He thought it was [a billion-dollar idea](https://twitter.com/shl/status/54072049395712000), but the path to success has not been nearly as smooth as it was at Pinterest. Though Gumroad has helped over 40k creators make a total of $213m, Lavingia has lately been getting attention for getting specific about the difficulties of building a startup.

Every month, Lavingia publishes [Gumroad’s financials on Twitter](https://twitter.com/shl/status/1160968709529194496?s=20). Recently, he gained greater fame for a viral Medium story, publishing in February the Medium post [Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company](https://medium.com/s/story/reflecting-on-my-failure-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company-b0c31d7db0e7). More than 700k people have read it. 

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